


Simplicity in the Woods

by mautadite



Series: Modern ASOIAF Fantasy [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 17:45:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2119041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Modern AU, Starks as werewolves.</i> Sansa juggles the family condition and her growing attraction to her classmate.</p><p>“It’s a small town, and you all know how small towns gossip. Can you imagine? ‘Strange things have been happening, ever since those Starks moved in.’”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/gifts).



> Written for round ten of the GOT Exchange. Prompt as seen in first part of summary.
> 
> Many thanks to CommaSplice for the beta! This was just a tonne of fun to write; please enjoy! :)

A month or so after Sansa and her family move into town, Sansa starts giving in.

Margaery leans closer. She’s been dropping hints for the last half an hour. Ostensibly, they’re sitting on this bench in a far corner of the school courtyard to practise for the debate next week, but their books are closed, notes tucked away against the wind, and one of Margaery’s hands rests lightly on Sansa’s thigh. Margaery is a terrible flirt; she’ll bat her eyelashes at friends and acquaintances, boys and girls. She’s been doing it to Sansa ever since she walked up to her on that first day and said that she’d never heard someone with such an appealing northern accent. But this is different. She leans closer.

This close, the smell of her is almost unbearably good. Tingles shoot across Sansa’s neck and shoulders as she inhales the faint scent of Margaery’s rose perfume, and all the deeper, richer undertones in her skin. She can hear her pulse too, thundering and drowning out all the other noises that seep into the courtyard. Margaery’s eyes are closed which is all for the best, as she cannot see the way that Sansa’s are surely widening and darkening right now.

Margaery leans closer, and this is definitely the moment to stop her right now— to tell her that they should get back to preparing their notes, or pretend that she hears Robb popping the horn. The reasons why this is a bad idea must number in the hundreds, but Sansa can’t think of them, not with the way Margaery’s rose-dusted cheeks glow, and her heartbeat rapidly increases in tempo. With that cadence, it sounds as if she’s nervous. 

_Nervous_. Sansa almost wants to laugh. It seems ludicrous, that Margaery Tyrell should be nervous about anything at all, much less anything concerning Sansa.

Other than… well.

The wind blows. Margaery leans closer, closer, and part of Sansa has already capitulated. When they finally meet, Sansa jerks Margaery even nearer, and all the rich sounds and smells blend and fade into the background of her mind, overwhelmed as she is by the sweetness of their kiss.

~

It’s a solemn, moody car full of Starks driving home later that evening.

The car is a new one, Dad’s present to Robb for his eighteenth birthday. Robb hadn’t wanted to use it to get to and from school, but he’s practical enough to know that they have no choice. It’s a small town. Everyone knows where the Starks live, and how far it is from the secondary school. It would be no trouble for any of them to walk or run the distance to and from school every day, but it would also be noticed, and they can’t have that. They have to keep up appearances.

It’s a quiet drive, cutting through the town in its sleepy afternoon phase, only a little while along the breezy ocean front, and then a few miles towards the edge of the great, sprawling forest. The houses grow sparser and the trees begin to proliferate; great, age-old oaks, sky-scraping pines and swaying beeches. 

No one attempts conversation.

The source of Arya’s annoyance is the same as it is every other afternoon: having to hold back during football practice. Sitting next to Sansa in the back seat, her leg jerks up and down with pent up energy, but her mouth is screwed up in a little scowl.

“What’s the point of joining a team sport if I can’t do my best to benefit the team?” she always complains, but Mum and Dad are always very strict on this. Even when Arya does things half-heartedly, she’s still really excellent at it; she’s never been very good at holding back.

Bran is looking out of the right window longingly as the scenery flies by, lost in thought. He’s been the most upset about having to be chauffeured back and forth between school and home. 

Up front in the passenger seat, Jon is quiet. He’s usually a little on the quieter side, but today there’s an edge of anger to it. Sansa had heard about the commotion in the cafeteria at lunch, where Jon had saved a kid from some bullies. It’s quintessential Jon, really, standing up for others who might not be able to do it for themselves, so Sansa hadn’t thought much about it other than a fond thought for her brother. It seems like it’s still on his mind, though.

They turn onto the long ambling road that leads through the light woods, to their house. Sansa hesitates to call it a mansion, simply because she doesn’t think of herself or her family as the types to live in a mansion, but it’s admittedly pretty huge. 

“A bit more ostentatious than any of us would like, I think,” Dad had said when they’d all piled out of the cars to greet their new home. “But the location’s ideal. Secluded enough for us but close to town, miles and miles of deep woods behind it, and there are wolves in these areas—”

A loud snicker from Arya. “There sure are.”

“—so the humans avoid it. It’ll have to do.”

The road isn’t paved, so the car jerks along at a slower pace. Robb’s a good driver, and is usually better at avoiding the bigger ruts, but like everyone else, he’s got something on his mind this afternoon.

Sansa is willing to bet it’s his row with Dad last night that’s weighing on him. She knows how to read him when he’s holding in his anger and trying not to let it spill over onto those who aren’t concerned. But it’s obviously affecting him. It makes her feel guilty, for a moment, that she’s never tried to broach the topic of Theon’s pelt with her parents. Theon can be a bit of an ass sometimes, but he’s all right, really. He is also Robb’s best friend.

They all know the story behind their father’s ward. As part of his punishment for starting the clandestine war that had taken the lives of so many, Balon Greyjoy had had to surrender his last son to a family of the Council’s choosing. For safekeeping, and to guard against any future attempts, was the way it went officially. And Ned Stark, to ensure that Theon could not re-join his family until the Council ordained it, had taken Theon’s pelt and hidden it away.

It’s supposed to be heart-stoppingly beautiful, the pelt of a selkie. Sansa’s never seen it, but their old babysitter had told them stories about the selkies, their power to enchant humans, the beauty and magic in their skins, and their constant, powerful yearning for the sea when they were apart from it.

Theon is twenty-one, and so this makes it twelve years that he’s been separated from his ocean home. Moving to this town has put the sea right under his nose, and Sansa has easily been able to notice its effect on him. He’s quieter, antsier, spends more time out of the house than in it, usually down by the docks. Therein lay the crux of Robb’s late night argument with Dad: let Theon have his pelt, at least for a little while every day, or he’d go absolutely sick with longing.

Sansa, listening from her room, hadn’t been able to make out their father’s calm, quiet answer, but from the way Robb had stomped into his room afterwards, it hadn’t been hard to guess.

The evening’s shadows stretch into the car, crawling over her eldest brother’s face and making it seem much sterner than usual. Sansa wishes there was something she could do, but they all know Dad doesn’t usually budge when he gets like this.

As for her…

She should be happy, right? Thinking about that kiss on the bench, and then the fifteen subsequent minutes in the empty classroom makes her blush hard and her blood run hot. Sansa has to turn to look outside the window so that her siblings can’t see her smile at the memory. 

At the same time… god. Falling for a human is the sort of romantic twist that she would love to hear about in the stories that Old Nan told when they were young, and would sometimes imagine happening to her. Two lovers, separated by the barrier between their worlds… it was all well and good for a seven year old who loved the tales, but as a seventeen year old, she’s forced to be a lot more pragmatic. Heightened senses, a body more powerful than it seems, a majestic alternate form, and one night out of thirty during which she gave herself over to her animal nature might seem good on paper, but it’s quite another thing in practice.

There’s also her family to consider.

“So… are we going to talk about the rose-scented elephant in the car, or…?”

It’s Arya who speaks up, breaking the quiet stillness in the car as she elbows Sansa in the side. Sansa sighs, turning to her brothers and sister. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

“I was wondering when one of you would bring it up.”

“We were kind of waiting for you to,” Jon confesses, turning a little in his seat. “It was obvious from about ten feet away.”

“You do kind of reek of her,” Robb puts in apologetically, meeting her eyes in the mirror overhead. A general murmur of agreement goes up around the car, and Sansa blushes, covering her face with her hands.

“Oh my god, ‘reek’? Stop exaggerating,” she scolds, voice muffled. She peels her hands away to glare at them as they smirk at her. “All we did was make out a little; it’s not like we…”

She lets that sentence finish itself, very conscious of Bran sitting a few feet away. Her little brother notices, and snorts.

“I’m thirteen, Sansa, not three. Anyway, we’re not saying that you two had sex…”

“…just that she kinda left her mark on you,” Arya finishes, grinning harder. Sansa groans, knowing how red her face must be right now.

“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my siblings,” she says, shaking her head.

“Hashtag supernatural problems?” Robb says, and they all laugh while Sansa mock-growls at him to keep his eyes on the road.

“I like her more than the vampire, and definitely more than Joffrey,” Jon says after a moment, twisting more in his seat so that he can face her. “And we can’t tell you how to handle this. But you know the human thing is going to become an issue that you’ll have to work out, and it’ll happen sooner rather than later, right?”

Another chorus of affirmative grunts goes up around the car. Sansa smoothes her skirt down her legs and nods, thinking of how Margaery’s hand had felt in her own. Soft, warm, and so very fragile, like a secret. Sansa has never been the best at keeping secrets.

“Yeah. I know.”

~

Somehow, even though he has to wait until Jon unloads his chair and Robb lifts him into it, Bran is the first one inside. Their house is situated in a large, airy clearing, just at the edge of the deep woods, with pine trees standing sentinel along the drive. There isn’t another dwelling for miles, but it’s not as if they get many visitors. There are supposed to be a couple other supernatural families in town, but they aren’t obliged to reveal themselves if they don’t want to. So far, they’ve yet to sense any of them.

Robb gets back into the car to go park. Everyone else piles into the house and through to the light, breezy kitchen, where Dad is seated in the breakfast nook with a cup of tea and a pile of paperwork. He greets the round of hellos with a tip of his cup.

“Hi Dad, I’m going for a run,” Bran says, wheeling past and heading towards his room on the ground floor.

“Not until you’ve finished your homework, you’re not,” Dad calls to his disappearing figure, and they all hear Bran’s groan of disappointment. 

Sansa heads to the fridge to get one of her shakes, blowing Dad a kiss as she passes. She sees him cock his head curiously in her direction, but he’ll probably chalk the foreign, girlish scent up to intense friendly hugging or something. It’s Mum she has to watch out for.

“How is he?” Jon asks, jerking his head towards the upper floors of the house. They’ve all settled in around the kitchen; they’re sort of a tradition, their after-school talks with their parents.

“Doing well,” Dad responds. “Catelyn is with him now. His fever’s been rising steadily; this full moon is going to be the one for sure.”

Arya perks up. “Really?”

“Yes, I do think so.”

Sansa grins along with the rest of them; it’s wonderful news. Rickon has been working up to his first transformation for a few months now: growing patches of fur that he almost immediately sheds, going through bouts of high fevers, becoming even more wild and erratic. It’ll be amazing when he can finally turn with them, run with them. Usually he stays at home with Theon during the full moons. Sometimes he’ll come along when they go for their quarter moon runs, riding on top of Dad with his fists buried in his fur, but it’s not the same. When all eight of them can transform and run and play together under the moon’s light, they’ll be both family _and_ pack.

“Can we go see him?” Sansa wants to know, feeling warmed and excited in spite of everything else.

“Not right now,” Dad says apologetically as Robb slips inside. “Your mother just brought him down from a fit; he’ll need to rest. We’ve also decided that it would be best if we guided him through his first time by ourselves. Knowing Rick, it’s going to be a rough one.”

“Poor kid,” Jon comments. 

“He’s strong; he’ll pull through all right.”

They lapse into a brief silence, after which Arya pulls out her Economics textbook and asks Dad to help her with a problem. Sansa winces; she can almost palpably feel the strain between Dad and Robb, who is standing at the sink sipping from a bottle of water. 

Mum comes padding down the stairs and walks into the room.

“Ah, I thought I heard a stampede,” she says, smiling as she pulls her hair out of its messy topknot. She goes around the kitchen, doling out brief, absent-minded affection as is her wont; scratching behind Jon’s ear, patting Robb’s cheek, ruffling Arya’s hair. Sansa blows her a kiss and makes sure to stay downwind of her. 

“Did you get him to sleep?” Dad asks.

“Yes, finally. I got him to drink the moonflower tea. He should be able to rest for a few hours.”

Mum usually works as a primary school teacher, but ever since they moved, she’s held off on getting a new post to stay at home to take care of Rickon. Sansa is more used to seeing her in suits rather than sweats, but she seems very much in her element.

“How was everyone’s day?” she asks, settling into the breakfast nook with Dad and Arya.

“Sansa made a new friend,” Arya says slyly.

“Oh, that’s nice, sweetie.” 

Sansa returns her mother’s smile, and bares her teeth at Arya when she turns away.

“And Jon,” Arya continues cheerfully, “almost ripped these jerks’ throats out because they were bullying some kid during lunch.”

Mum and Dad’s heads swivel in Jon’s direction immediately, and he rolls his eyes.

“His name is Sam, and I didn’t almost rip anyone’s throat out. I just got a little mad. They were being terrible to him.”

“How mad is a little mad?” Mum asks mildly.

Jon sighs. “I growled a little. It’s no big deal.”

“I appreciate that you want to stand up for others,” Dad says, “and it’s very admirable. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But we all have to remember to be careful.”

“No amazing feats. No showing off. No losing yourself,” Mum chants. It’s her mantra; it has been ever since they were little kids, and learning that not everyone could run fast enough to keep pace with a car, or land right-footed from a ten foot drop.

“Aww.” Arya pouts. “I was just about to suggest that we go over to the bullies’ houses and cast scary shadows on their walls, howl a little, raise some hell.”

“I know you’re joking, but please don’t,” Mum drawls, tickling Arya on her nape until she squirms a little. “It’s a small town, and you all know how small towns gossip. Can you imagine? ‘Strange things have been happening, ever since those Starks moved in.’ Let’s avoid that, okay Jon?”

“No turning on the local population or drawing undue attention. Got it, Mum.”

She beams, and it could brighten the darkest part of the woods. Jon doesn’t call her that often, though she _is_ his mother, for all intents. They aren't actually related in any way, and that might have been a problem or a source of contention in another family. But blood is only blood; pack is pack.

Mum looks around the kitchen, stealing Dad’s cup from under his nose.

“And where is Theon this afternoon?”

Inevitably, everyone turns to Robb. Sansa, who is closest to him, reads a minute amount of annoyance in his little shrug.

“He worked the late shift at the bar last night, and stayed over at some girl’s apartment because he had another early shift. He texted me.”

“Tell him that sending a text like that our way wouldn’t be remiss next time, perhaps?” This comes from Dad, adjusting his glasses as he looks up from Arya’s homework. Robb grunts.

“That’s the bar on the docks, right?” Mum asks, and Robb just nods. “Are we sure that that’s the best place for Theon to work? Salt in the wound, and all.”

“He took what he could get, Mum. And I think he prefers to be close by. It helps. Of course, what would also help would be if he could get his—”

“Robb,” Dad sighs, cutting across him. He puts down his pen, and Sansa can see Arya’s eyes playing ping pong between he and Robb. “We’ve spoken about this. You know I’d like to help him out, but my hands are tied. Theon gets his pelt back…”

“…when the Council says he can return, I know,” Robb finishes, sounding so bitter and frustrated that Sansa wants to go give him a hug. She’s not sure how welcome it would be right now, though.

“It shouldn’t be too long now, sweetie,” Mum offers, and Robb just grunts again. 

Sansa doesn’t know too much about the inner workings of the Council, which is how they like it, she thinks. It’s headed up by ten senior magical beings across Westeros and the Summer Isles. In terms of doling out justice for infractions against the supernatural world, the punishment is supposed to suit the crime. For his war, the Greyjoy king himself had been imprisoned, of course. But Sansa can’t help but think that taking away Balon’s heir away from the sea is hurting Theon more than his father.

Before anyone can say anything to break the awkward tension, Bran comes rolling back into the kitchen.

“Hi Mum. I’m done with my homework Dad. _Now_ can I go for a run?”

“That was quick,” Jon says, smiling.

“It was just Maths!” Bran says defensively, craning his head to accept the nuzzle that Mum goes over to give him.

“Perhaps I should check it over before you leave,” Dad says gravely, peering down at him over his glasses.

“Oh, stop torturing him,” Mum says, laughing at Bran’s agonised look. “We’re only a few days from the full moon, you know how itchy they get. Go on, love. Just don’t gorge yourself.”

“I’ll take him,” Robb offers, pushing himself off of the counter. “I could do with a run too. Just let me go put my stuff away, okay, buddy?”

They all watch him lope out of the room, and Bran whoops. 

“Me too,” Jon says, and disappears after him.

“Me three?” Arya asks hopefully, looking up at Dad. He sighs, gives her one of his solemn smiles and waves her off. 

“Me four, I guess,” Sansa says, and tosses her empty bottle away. It’s been a long day; it’ll do her some good to stretch her limbs and spend some time in the simplicity of the woods. She waves at her parents and tries to slip out of the kitchen unheeded. No such luck; Mum sniffs at her as she passes by, and then apprehends her by the back of her top. Sansa gives her brightest, sweetest smile as she’s inspected.

“New friend, was it?” Mum drawls in a low whisper, giving her a lopsided smile.

“Mhmm.”

“Do we need to have the ‘how to handle human lovers’ talk?”

Sansa flushes all over again. This is one area where the nature of their family condition doesn’t really work in her favour. She already knows her parents’ thoughts on relationships with humans: best avoided, and if not, the shorter the better.

“No Mum, we don’t.”

Mum pats her cheek, eyes twinkling. 

“Tell the others I said to be back in two hours.”

~

The five of them stride across the grounds to the shed where they stash their clothes and Bran’s chair. They turn in the little copse nearby.

When Sansa was little, she’d always been leery of this part. The change. Going from her own familiar body to a completely different one. And not just any body: that of a huge, hulking beast. It had frightened her. It’s hard to imagine yourself in fairy tales when the girl is also the wolf.

By now, changing is as easy as breathing.

First, falling onto all fours, orienting herself. Feeling the pull of the swelling moon approaching, the wolf is eager to come out. The hair on her head shrinks into her scalp, only to start sprouting up all along the length of her body. Her torso elongates, her bones creak and shift and grow. A snout grows in place of her mouth and nose, paws and claws where fingers and toes were, and a tail emerges out of her spine. It hurts; it always does. But the pain is a thrill, a necessary side-effect of becoming her other self.

When it is done, it is always as if being alive, really _alive_ , for the first time. All of her senses, which she knows to be much sharper than a human’s, are amplified dozens of times over. The world is simpler; fewer colours and more _sounds_ and _smells_ , things to live and breathe and hunt by. She is strong, more powerful than a hurricane, much bigger than her little cousins the wolves, but also beautiful and graceful. Sansa bounds into the air, landing several feet away. The wolf is out.

Her brothers and sister surround her. Robb is biggest of them all, reaching most men’s chests, and is only dwarfed by their father. His fur is a deep russet red, several shades darker than Sansa’s. Jon is sleeker, but no less strong, slinking smoothly about the clearing as he waits for their younger siblings to transform, his coat a shocking fall of white. Bran leaps happily to his feet in an auburn blur, prancing around and stretching his muscles, already nipping playfully at Robb’s hind legs, eager to roughhouse. Arya takes the longest, but the effect is always awesome. Her dark brown fur and gleaming eyes would terrify any man, and she is bigger than Sansa, for all that she is younger.

They establish a link.

 _‘I think Bran might want to play,’_ Robb says teasingly. A gentle butt of his giant head sends Bran tumbling to the side, but he goes racing back in again at once. Robb bites him affectionately on the scruff of his neck.

 _‘Then let’s play!’_ Arya demands. _‘Last one to the creek gets last feed of the kill!’_

 _‘You’re on!’_ Sansa shoots back, bounding over their heads and racing off between the trees. She hangs back in the hunt, more often than not, but it’s worth it to hear their cries of consternation and surprise. Sansa howls back a laugh, running ahead, and they’re already chasing after her. 

Adrenaline easing through her veins and towards her muscles, she weaves between the trees, turning and twisting on a pin. Her siblings are already catching up, but it wouldn’t be much of a game if they didn’t. Sansa races on, baying at the setting sun, and the woods come alive with the sound of werewolves at play.

~

Despite her promises to herself to think it over, or at least take it slow, Thursday afternoon finds Sansa in one of the empty classrooms on the Lower Sixth block, Margaery sitting in her lap as Sansa noses kisses along her throat.

“Oh god,” Margaery groans, shivering in her arms and tilting her head even further back. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were straight.”

Sansa snorts. “Why would you think that?” she asks without lifting her head. Margaery has a cluster of very tiny freckles on either side of her neck; she has counted and kissed them all, and is now trying to determine their shape. A tree on one side, she decides, and a star on the other.

“Oh, you know.” Margaery squirms in her lap. “I’ve been hitting on you from almost the moment you sashayed down from the north and stepped foot onto the premises, and you didn’t really start responding until earlier this week.”

She has to hold back a chuckle. If only Margaery knew how she’d had to restrain herself from throwing herself at Margaery’s feet.

“A girl doesn’t immediately flirt back with you, so she must be straight?” she says instead, with a teasing lilt. She can’t see Margaery blush, but she does feel the blood rising to her face. Sansa pulls back after giving her neck a last kiss; this is a sight meant to be seen.

“Well, when you put it like _that_ , I sound vain,” Margaery replies, tossing her hair with a grin.

“Just a coincidence, I’m sure,” Sansa says, and Margaery giggles. 

“Next time I’ll be sure to trust in my bi-dar.”

“You do that. Also, I don’t sashay.”

“Fine. Glide, then.”

Sansa chuckles and pulls her down for another kiss. Every kiss with Margaery seems better than the last; it’s so easy to get lost in her pretty lips and all her heavenly scents. Her perfume, the Copic markers she likes to use to do up her notes, the earth from the garden that she mentions working on every morning and afternoon. Sansa hooks an arm around her neck, enjoying the slow, lazy bliss of it.

“You’re so warm,” Margaery murmurs, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You do a body good in an autumn like this.”

Pulling back, Sansa feels a blush rise in her own cheeks. Margaery strokes a finger from her temple to her chin. She looks at her for a moment with a peculiar expression that Sansa cannot quite place.

“I like you a lot, you know,” she says, repeating the caress. Sansa captures her finger and bites it lightly.

“I like you a lot too.” It makes her warm, to think of just how much she likes her. “I don’t do this much, you know. Snogging in empty classrooms after school.”

“I can tell. You’re a good girl.”

Sansa bites her lip. Margaery mirrors the motion, and there’s that look again.

“Do you want to hang out or something this Saturday?” Margaery blurts out suddenly. Her heart’s gone all queer and thumpy, Sansa notes, though that could have something to do with the hand that Sansa uses to caress the small of her back. “We could get a chance to talk in a place that’s… not here.”

 _Say no_ , Sansa thinks.

“Yes, I’d love that,” she says. “Although I have a family thing on Saturday… is Sunday afternoon any good for you?”

Margaery’s entire face lights up. “That works. Your house, my house, some place in town? I don’t really suggest my house; my gran’s been out of town for two months now, and my dad’s a bit much to handle when she isn’t around. You know politicians.”

“Um, somewhere in town, maybe? You pick.”

“All right. I’ve got the perfect place in mind.”

They’ve got some time again before Robb, Bran, and Arya will be finished with their different clubs. They could use the time to go over their debate notes, or the French that Margaery promised she would help Sansa with. Instead, they share another smile and Margaery gets comfortable on Sansa’s lap. Their lips meet again, and Sansa gets lost in the aroma of flowers.

~

Saturday is a slow, lazy day for most of them. Rickon is still abed, and they take turns visiting him in his waking hours, cheering him up with thoughts of how he’ll soon be able to change at will and join them in the forest. Mum insists that they all get their homework done early, so they won’t have to worry about it after the full moon. She moves about the house with all her usual efficiency and energy. Sansa doesn’t know how she does it, fits everything else in. Late yesterday evening she and Dad had gone for a short hunt, and come back chasing each other and laughing like pups.

Sansa spends most of the day on the couch, catching up on her coursework and texting Margaery. It’s hard to get herself to concentrate with the anticipation crawling underneath her skin like livewire, but having someone to chat with helps.

 **‘we can meet at the seaman’s shell on high st. @ 4. there’s a mermaid on the sign out front w/ red hair almost as pretty as yours ;)’** Margaery sends, and Sansa can’t believe that that actually makes her blush.

Robb comes down to be charmingly annoying at her for a few minutes.

“You really like her, don’t you?” he says, curling up on the other end of the couch.

“Oh, you.” Sansa kicks one of his legs. “Don’t start with that ‘you reek of her’ nonsense again; I barely saw her all day yesterday.”

“Actually, it’s the way you keep checking for new messages.”

He says it while she’s halfway towards reaching for her phone, so there’s no real way to deny it with dignity. So instead she snaps her teeth at him when he laughs and sends him away with a smile.

Theon comes home later that evening, as he usually does for the full moon. He seems a bit more like his usual self, amidst the clinging, foreign smell of cigarette smoke and cheap beer, and the more familiar scents of human girls. But underneath is still the pervading smell of sadness, the faintest wisp of the sea. 

He winks at Sansa as he passes by the couch and heads towards the staircase, where there are already footsteps pounding down to meet him.

Arya wanders in a while later, and sniffs the air.

“I thought so,” she says, and sits down with a plop next to Sansa. She can tell that there’s something on her sister’s mind: her mouth is screwed up in that half-scowl, half-pout that says she’s thinking hard. Sansa closes her book and waits.

“Do you think you could handle it?” she asks finally, leaning back against the couch. “Being separated from your skin or the forest like that?”

She’s chewing pensively on her bottom lip. Sansa’s hand reaches immediately for her hair, deep red and falling forward onto her shoulder. Arya is doing the same, twirling a lock of brown around a finger.

“I’m not sure that I could.”

~

Turning with the moon is always different.

Mum and Dad take Rickon and leave beforehand, heading into the dark further north. Their little brother is gaining colour, looking robust and twisting about in Dad’s arms; the change is imminent. 

The rest of them set out a little while after, leaving the house in Theon’s care. It’s their habit to go off along their separate ways, running swiftly as they can in their two-legged form until the moon rises and its rays find them. They say brief goodbyes, promising to meet up again when the transformation is done.

Sansa races headlong into the forest, the wind nipping fiercely at her bare skin, mud splashing up on her feet and legs. This is only their second full moon here, and a lot of the forest is still unknown to her. The wolf wants to know it all, wants to carve out a place and claim it as her own, protect it with her life. These woods are old, feeling ancient even to the ancient beast inside her.

She crashes along on a south-easterly path, eyes closed, letting her senses guide her. This is how the moon finds her.

Like this, it is even more painful. The moon’s light forces the change upon her, sinking deep inside of her to bring out the beast. More savage, less docile. She falls on all fours, relishing the growing feeling of power and vitality. 

This had been hard too, at first. Letting herself go to become something truly wild. But the creature within her needs it, and Sansa and the creature are one and the same.

She emerges majestic, a couple hundred pounds of muscle and teeth and fur, and belts out an enormous cry to her mistress the moon. The night washes over her, bright with pearly light and full of promise.

~

She lets herself run wild for a bit. She hears the echoing howls of her siblings one by one, pinpointing their location. Sansa does not go to them yet; the woods are calling.

A light rain fell the night before, and the forest floor is damp beneath her paws. All around her the trees cast tall shadows, painting her surroundings a darker black. The scents rise up in all their earthiness as she flies over the ground, speaking to her. A bear padded by here. A boar died there. Two of her littler kin fought here, and blood was spilt, but all in friendliness. She breathes and the tales come to her.

Sansa feels huge, bigger than the sun, strong enough to take down anything. She catches wind of a stag, only a few hundred yards west of her, and toys with the idea of slinking towards it, giving chase and tearing its throat out. It would be easy enough. The prey in these woods are fast, but nothing is faster than she is.

The moment passes, and the deer moves on. There will be time enough for hunting with the pack, later. The moon is young and will have her in its hold until the morning comes. 

She runs on. This part of the forest is unfamiliar to her, but home is a beacon in her mind; Sansa can never lose her way. 

She comes upon one of her smaller cousins, a lively male with a dark-grey coat. He is big for his species, but not fool enough to challenge her seriously. She indulges him with a tussle, snapping at his legs and tail, allowing him to dart in for his own playful attacks before she whips around and sends him flying back. There is no challenge in it, but it allows her to run about a bit, amuse herself in his dancing and bowing. When he finally rolls over onto his back in submission, she sniffs and licks at his upturned stomach, and sends him on his way.

She delves further west, further south. There is something delicious about the air here; so many scent trails, so many stories. Sansa feels a pull a mile or so out, and lopes towards it. A cry goes up somewhere from the north; one of the little wolves, not any of her siblings. She thinks of her parents, of Rickon. She wonders if he’s completed the change yet, if he knows now the joy that they all do. 

It doesn’t take long for her to come upon the source of the alluring scent: a little clearing surrounded by red flowers and tall pine trees. Sansa leaps high and bounds into it, sniffing around for whatever might be emanating the lovely odour.

Immediately, she knows that something is wrong.

It only takes a few seconds for her legs to buckle under her; she tumbles onto her forelegs, and her hind legs give way soon after. Confusion, at first: what could be doing this to her? Sansa tries to struggle back to her feet, but soon goes crashing down again, accompanied by an overwhelming weakness. Even as a pup, she’d never felt this frail.

After the fifth time that she tries and fails to stand, the anger and the panic start to set in. She tries to whip around and snarl at whomever or whatever might be doing this to her, but to no avail; the only sound to escape her mouth is a little whimper. She tries howling to signal her brothers and sister, with the same result. Her attempt to establish a link fails as well; none of them seem to be within her reach. That should be impossible, she should be able to feel out her pack anywhere, even within this vast forest, but her mind feels empty. 

Sansa growls weakly, refusing to believe herself trapped, but that has to be what this is. The alluring smell is gone, replaced by a rotting, sickly one that a vague memory tells her that she knows. All other scents seem to have faded; that, or she can no longer pick up on smells as she should be able to. 

_Think_ , the wolf barks. 

She forces herself onto her forelegs, trying to look around. The clearing is as nondescript as can be, perhaps fifteen feet across, littered with fallen brush and needles and pinecones. There are several openings between the trees, all of them growing thickets of the red flowers that she’d noticed. Sansa crawls to one of the larger bushes, thinking that she should be able to step over or at least squeeze herself though.

But the closer she gets, the harder the awful, dizzying smell washes over her, until she finds herself crawling back away from the flowers, pawing at her nose in agony. It smells like… but it _can’t_ be; she knows all of the different strains, the smells, the flowers and their colours… Their parents had made sure of that. These look nothing like anything she’s ever seen or read about.

But what else _could_ it be, that weakens her so much, makes her feel that it would be death to touch it, or breathe too much of the air around it?

Her heart tightens with cold, and the moon’s power seems to leak out of her with every passing second. She can barely look at the plants, for all they fill her with fear and revulsion. These had been the monsters in her fairy tales.

The minutes crawl by, and she tries again and again to howl, snarl, move about the clearing to find some opening that isn’t bombarded by the repulsive plant. No success. It would affect her less if she were in her two-legged form, but there is no turning back until moonset. Sansa growls and whines in her throat, refusing to give up. 

Once more, she tries to howl, even if the sound is only a weak one. Arya has the best ears of them all; she would be able to hear it. But once again, nothing but a stripling cry escapes her. Undeterred, Sansa tries again, and her attempts consume all of her attention. 

When she hears the new sounds, they hit her like a blow to the throat.

Quiet footsteps. Rustling shrubbery. Light voices.

_Humans._

Her ears flatten in horror; how could they have gotten this close without her hearing or smelling them? She sniffs the air again, trying in vain not to inhale the sick aroma of the flowers. Yes, humans, definitely. Three of them, two males and a female. And they are very close by.

“…so stop looking so glum. We can start heading back soon; we just need to get the aconite.”

“Urgh. You stop being so cheerful. You know you’re only in such a good mood because you have a date tomorrow.”

…No. It can’t be. It can’t.

“Ahh, I do, don’t I? Oh, don’t look like that, you can’t expect me _not_ to be excited. Have you _seen_ her? Spoken to her? She’s the sweetest girl in the world.”

“I haven’t had a date in four months, and no, Marg, the warlock doesn’t count. I’ll be a grump all I like.”

“Um, guys? If the map’s any good, I think it should be just ahead.”

“Oh! You’re right!”

It _is_. Shock and disbelief make her tail go rigid, and she tries to catch the scent again as the rustling sounds come closer and closer. Yes, there’s no mistaking the first scent: deep and flowery and fresh. The second scent is similar, but richer, and the third is the least familiar to her, but she knows it all the same.

_No, no, no…_

Sansa whines silently, but there is nowhere to hide, nothing to do but tense up with dread as they approach.

“You’re right, Sam, it’s over here,” says the first, sweet-lilted voice. “Okay, two pounds of aconite root, gathered under the full moon, and then we’re done. I’ll make you both some hot chocolate when we get back to the cottage. Gran’s supposed to have some in the—”

The trio appears just beyond the limits of the clearing, and when they spot Sansa, three things happen at once. 

The tall, fair-haired boy nocks an arrow onto a bow so fast, it seems as if he’d walked into view that way. The chubby, bearded boy squeaks and the map in his hands goes wafting to the ground. And the girl presses both hands to her mouth, brown eyes wide.

On reflex, Sansa growls.

“Margaery, get back.” Loras Tyrell’s voice is tight with alarm, but very even, to his credit. He left school before the Starks moved to town, and Sansa has never seen him up close, but with that hair and that face, there’s no one else it could be. “You too, Sam.”

It takes him a moment, but Sam Tarly obeys, after swiping his map off the ground with a clumsy hand. It’s the boy that Jon had stood up for in the cafeteria; Arya had pointed him out to her from a distance.

Knowing that she can recognise them makes her feel just a sliver better, like a piece of flimsy armour. It does not, however, answer the question of what two human boys and a girl — Margaery Tyrell, no less, Sansa’s human… _something_ — are doing in the woods on the night of a full moon, gathering wolfsbane from a trap that had obviously been set by someone with no small amount of knowledge and skill. 

She tries to stand, hating to be seen like this, but only manages to sit on her hind legs. Loras narrows his eyes, pulling his arm back tighter.

“Margaery, I said get _back_ ,” he repeats, keeping Sansa in his sights. She tries to keep an eye on him too, but the arrow presents much less danger to her than the plants surrounding her. And her eyes keep flickering back to Margaery. “Look at that thing, it’s…”

“A wolf,” Margaery murmurs, staring straight at her.

“Wolves don’t get that big, Marg. That’s a werewolf, or I’ll eat my arm.” Seeing that she won’t listen, Loras moves next to his sister. “The only problem is, there aren’t supposed to be any werewolves in these woods. We would know about it.”

“I know but… there obviously _is_ one. Trapped right in front of us.”

“Dammit.” Loras does a quick three hundred and sixty degree turn, and Sansa stays on the alert, barely breathing. “There are probably others. These guys move in packs.”

Margaery seems entranced, but she flicks her eyes away from Sansa. “There’s no way. A pack we would _definitely_ know about. There aren’t any packs in the area, so they would’ve had to have moved in from somewhere. The Council doesn’t allow that kind of move arbitrarily. They would have told us.”

Loras shakes his head.

“The Council doesn’t tell us anything. They would’ve told Gran.”

“And Gran would’ve told _me_.” Margaery insists. Then she falters. “Unless she told Dad…”

Loras blinks at her. “And Dad’s been going through a hard enough time as it is with the campaign. God. Do you think he might have forgotten?”

“A pack of werewolves is a huge thing to forget!”

“Um, guys?” Sam breaks in. The conversation has been making Sansa’s head spin along with the foul odour, but she turns to look at him. She sees that he’s been advancing slowly towards her. He jumps when her eyes seize upon him with as much heat as her fading strength allows. “I, uh… I don’t think this is just any werewolf.”

Loras snaps his head towards him. “What do you mean?”

The boy bites his lower lip, and then points.

“Look at her legs — I’m only guessing she’s female, judging by her mane, and um, you know — you see how long her legs are?” He has a soft, knowledgeable voice, even though it shakes with fear and wonder. “And the size of her head… and her snout, the way it protrudes. Like a direwolf. I think… I think she’s from the north.”

As he says it, he glances between Sansa and Margaery nervously. And when Margaery gasps again, hand to throat, Sansa knows that she knows.

Her first response is to growl softly; every instinct that she has rebels against the possibility of a human knowing her true identity. But this is Margaery, sweet, soft, cunning Margaery… Sansa isn’t even sure that she’s human now, with everything she’s learnt in the past five minutes. Though she certainly smells like she is, through and through.

Margaery stares at her as if in a reverie, but quickly snaps out of it. She pulls a pair of gloves out of her pocket.

“We need to get her out of there.”

“Margaery!” Loras barks in alarm.

“She can barely stand up straight, Loras, look at her.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to…”

“It actually _does_ mean we have to, it’s kind of what we do,” she throws over her shoulder, and kneels in front of the largest swatch of wolfsbane flowers. “If we leave her here, she’ll die. Just trust me, I’ll explain later.”

Sansa’s eyes prowl over her, and she picks up the sincerity in her voice. She manages a grateful rumble in her throat. She doesn’t know if she can wrap her mind around all of this, but she’ll be able to think more clearly once she’s free. Margaery looks at her with a commiserating expression. Now that they’re no longer cloudy with fear or confusion, her brown eyes seem brighter.

“I’ll um… try to explain to you too, afterwards. Sam, come help me. We need to pull them up by the roots. Loras…”

“Loras is standing guard,” her brother shoots back immediately. He’s switched his bow and arrow for two guns, and Sansa knows with cold certainty what they’re loaded with. “Just insurance,” he adds with a glance in her direction. “If her pack shows up, they’re going to want an explanation, and I’d rather do my explaining armed.”

Margaery purses her lips briefly, but nods. “Fine.”

Sam is kneeling next to her now, also gloved, and together they start pulling up the wolfsbane by the root. Sansa tries to keep to the perfect centre of the clearing, and allows herself to fall back onto her stomach. Margaery is watching her carefully.

“Did you… did you touch or ingest any of the blossoms at all?” she asks. Sansa shakes her head; a foreign and clumsy motion in this body.

“Okay, good. We just have to clear a path for you to get out, then.”

“I don’t understand,” Sam says. He seems to be trying to make his motions as non-threatening as possible as he works. The wolf scoffs at this, offended, but the girl grudgingly thinks that he is sweet. “How did she even manage to get in, if the aconite has this effect on her?”

Margaery works quickly, loosening the earth with a dagger before pulling the plant up and tossing it into a pile several yards away. A little path in the brush has already been cleared, and the clean air sweeps over Sansa like a kiss. Stealing a look at Sansa, Margaery wipes her brow with her forearm before she answers.

“This was before everything with your father, Sam, so you wouldn’t know… a few years ago, a few rogue werewolves passed through town. They were causing trouble down at the docks, and one of them even killed this girl. Gran set up these traps for them in the forest. It’s a new breed of aconite that she developed herself; it doesn’t look or smell anything like the strains that werewolves are taught to look out for. She made rings like these in a few different clearings, and spelled them to be irresistible to werewolves. Once they were inside, they were powerless to come out, and they were untraceable by their kin. When the threat was dealt with, Gran had us destroy all the rings except one. Aconite can be dangerous to humans as well, but when you know how to use it, well… it comes in handy.”

Sam picks up his pace, trying to catch up with Margaery. Sansa finds that she can rise onto her forelegs again.

“It’s a good thing we were here tonight.”

“A really good thing.”

All told, it takes them about ten minutes to clear the path completely for Sansa. Sam kicks all of the aconite flowers and roots into a pile, and there remains a gap about four feet across between two pine trees. Sansa gulps down a swallow of fresh air. The weakness still pervades her bones, but she can move without agony. Margaery and the others stand out of her way, seemingly unsure of whether or not to offer help. 

Sansa pads forward determinedly; she has strength enough now to do it alone. Bile rises in her gullet at the fresh knowledge that there is so much of the wolfsbane around her. If she judges what Margaery said to be true, a touch of this strange new species might make her faint dead away, or worse. It takes all of her mettle to keep walking forward, but with each step towards the exterior, her mind clears.

And as her mind clears, another touches it.

_‘…that you, Sansa? Sansa! Answer me!’_

She almost stumbles, so great is her surprise and relief. _Robb!_ And the others, too, scrambling for entrance into her consciousness, swiftly approaching from the north. Sansa looks at the three humans and thinks quickly, struggling to forge a link with her kin.

_‘Robb, everyone, I’m fine. Don’t come closer. I’ll explain when I see you. Don’t come closer.’_

_‘Sansa, what…?’_

_‘Don’t. I promise everything’s okay. I’ll meet you soon.’_

Sansa looks nervously at Loras, obviously still on high alert, his two pistols at the ready. She doesn’t know him well, but she does know her siblings. If Robb, or dear, impetuous Arya were to break upon the scene and see Sansa so weakened with wolfsbane everywhere and three humans surrounding her, things could happen too quickly for any of them to process.

Margaery is approaching, palms outstretched.

“I’m going to help you, okay?”

Sansa nods her great head briskly; there’s no more room for pride. The girl comes closer, and gently slides an arm around Sansa’s neck. Beneath the prickling sensation that races beneath her fur (has a human ever even touched her, in this form?), Sansa can spare a bit of room to be impressed. Margaery is a slim, short girl, and Sansa outweighs her several times over, and yet there is no fear in her. This close, Sansa would smell it.

She leads her out of the danger, step by careful step, in time with the slow thudding of Sansa’s heart. 

The moment she is clear, she feels it. The feebleness still lingers about her, but she can feel a surge of her strength returning. She looks up, and the moon has never been a more beautiful sight. Sansa bounds away from the humans, eliciting a gasp on all sides, and then whirls to face them.

A brief bow, to show her thanks. Then Sansa growls and jerks her head, hoping that her message will be clear. _Go._

Margaery falters.

“You’re still not completely well… my grandmother’s cottage isn’t far away, we could…”

Sansa’s snarl cuts across her. She wishes she could sound more understanding or more kind, but she doesn’t have time for it. She snarls again, and Loras, who has already put himself between Sansa and the others, glares hotly at her.

Sansa ignores him.

 _‘Go,’_ she says adamantly, just one harsh word in Margaery’s mind, and if she didn’t know who Sansa was before, she surely will now. Sansa doesn’t wait to see if they listen; Robb and the others are coming still. Turning tail, she races away as fast as her weakened legs will carry her. The scent of the humans fades away; sweat, silver, and a touch of rose perfume.

A mile out, she stands beneath an old oak tree, and belts out a long, high howl. Four others come back in reply, echoing against the dark. Sansa sinks to the ground, and waits for her brothers and sister to find her.

~

“…And then you left them there?”

Sansa nods affirmation and takes another swallow of her tea. She has to struggle not to make a face. Mum’s post full moon brews are always a little sour, but they’re bracing, and put the life and energy back into a body better than anything Sansa has ever tasted. After the night she’s had, Mum keeps pressing cup after cup into her hands.

It’s early afternoon at the Stark house and they’re gathered around the kitchen table. Rickon, Bran and Arya are still fast asleep, tuckered out from the night’s happenings. Everyone else has been listening to Sansa retell her tale. Mum hasn’t been able to stop fussing over her: making her tea, bringing her blankets, gently nuzzling her neck and checking her temperature. It would be a lie to say that all the attention isn’t welcome. 

“Witches?” Robb wonders, arms folded across his chest. He’s still faintly annoyed; he and Jon had gone back to scout, and get some more immediate answers, but the trio had disappeared. All the wolfsbane in the area had confused their scents, made them too difficult to track, in addition to making the wolves nauseous. Sansa still thinks it’s for the best. Between so many hot-headed brothers looking out for their sisters, and on a full moon, no less, it might have come to bloodshed.

“They sound more like druids to me,” says Jon.

“But Sansa says they were definitely human,” Theon points out. “You’ve all been around the girl, and Jon knows Sam. You’d have smelt druids.”

“Their species doesn’t quite interest me for now,” Dad says tightly, in the controlled voice he uses when he’s angry. His cell phone has been glued to his ear for the last hour, on the line with various officials in the Council. “My daughter almost died in a wolfsbane trap last night.”

“Dad, I already explained about the rogue werewolves, and her grandmother…”

“I know, sweetheart, I’m having them check up on that story right now. But I want a solid explanation.”

They all nod in agreement. Sansa sits with her blanket and drinks more of her tea.

Robb had explained what happened while she was trapped. After their transformations, it had taken them a while to group back together and realise that Sansa hadn’t tried to establish a mental link. That hadn’t been strange, as she’d mentioned wanting to be alone for a while. Then Arya noticed that her scent trail had somehow disappeared. The trap was ingenious, masking everything that might be used by another werewolf to track her. They’d been searching for about fifteen minutes before Robb had gotten through to Sansa. 

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, but Sansa doesn’t bother to check it. It’ll be Margaery, replying to her last text. They’ve been hesitantly sharing bits of information back and forth, but she doesn’t want to take her phone out now, amidst the pack.

Mum, who has raised six pups and was therefore not born yesterday, places her chin in her palm.

“Your new friend, was it?”

Sansa bites her lip. “Something like that.”

“Are you sure we don’t need to have that human lover talk?”

“Um…”

Mum smiles, and when Sansa doesn’t reply, she lets the question drop and goes for another. “I’d like to thank your friend for what she did.”

“I’ll see that you get the chance,” Sansa promises, fighting not to let the heat climb to her face.

It takes a while, but Father soon gets his answers, and shares them. The Tyrells are indeed druids of a sort, human though they are. Their family had been servants to the Gardeners many years ago, and when that great line had been wiped out, the Tyrells had taken their place as the druids of the region, using what they’d learnt from their masters to watch over the forests and glades and the creatures that lived within them. 

Someone working for the Council had mistakenly communicated the wrong date for the Starks’ move to Olenna Tyrell, the head of the family, and she hadn’t been expecting them for another three months. Thus her family hadn’t been warned, and the forest hadn’t been cleared.

“A death trap at the borders of our home, all because of some clerical error,” Dad sighs, anger still simmering. He walks over to Sansa and noses at the top of her head. “But I’m glad you’re all right, sweetheart. I’m going to try to set up a meeting with Olenna Tyrell when she gets back into town.”

When he’s gone, Sansa turns to her mother.

“And I think I’m going to talk to Margaery.”

Mum watches her closely. Though she looks after them all well, she lets them make their own decisions more often than not.

“Do you feel recovered?”

“I do, mostly,” she swears.

Her mother’s eyes are her own, mirrored pools of deep blue. They shine with a considering look before she pats Sansa’s hand.

“Let your brother take you. Now that we’ve got it all sorted and everyone’s thinking with cool heads, he can bring this Margaery back to meet us all properly.”

~

Sansa goes upstairs to change. When she meets Robb in the car, her brother seems pleased about something.

“What is it?” she asks as they start down the drive. A smile pulls at Robb’s lips.

“I don’t know what he said, but when Dad was on the phone with the Council, he somehow got them to agree to review the Greyjoy case.”

“Oh, Robb, that’s great!” Theon _had_ given her what looked like a genuine smile when she passed by him a minute ago, and those have been increasingly rare for him. “It’s something, at least… I know how much this has been bothering you and him both.”

“Yeah…” The sigh he expels seems to come straight up from his stomach, and he gives a sheepish little smile that’s very Robb. “I never really understood what Theon was going through before he explained it to me… It would be as if I had to choose between two parts of myself. Boy or wolf. And I tried to suss it out, think of which one I really am, or which one I’d rather be if I had to make that decision, and I couldn’t.”

Sansa nods, understanding. “But Theon has to.”

“Yeah. The man or the selkie. And they forced him into the man, and took him away from the sea.”

“Well… now there might be a chance for that to change.”

Robb tips a grateful look at her as he makes the bend to enter the town. A cool autumn wind is blowing through the windows. 

“Thanks to you, actually. Looks like your escapade with your girlfriend might end up doing more good than harm.”

Sansa bares her teeth at him, punching him on the arm.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Well, now that we know she’s not as human as she smells, and you won’t have to run around keeping secrets from her, maybe it’s time to start discovering some of _her_ secrets.” He winks, and Sansa covers her face with her hands.

“Urgh. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you.”

~

Robb parks a block away, and Sansa walks to the café alone. The weather is considerably cooler than it’s been all week, and there aren’t many people about; it’s a small town, and they take their family time on Sundays very seriously. There’s only one other person in the café when Sansa slips in across from Margaery.

She looks even prettier than usual if that’s possible, with her curly hair tumbling around her shoulders. The scent of her hits Sansa from the door, as good as it was on that first day; roses, earth and good clean skin. Her eyes widen by a fraction when she sees Sansa, and then she settles back against the chair.

“Hi,” she says, with an uncertain smile.

“Hi,” Sansa replies. Margaery’s heartbeat is out of control, which is amazing, considering that it had been as steady as anything last night under the full moon, when she’d led a great beast out of the ring of wolfsbane. It means that her nervousness is for the current Sansa, red-haired and pale-skinned and slight, and that is still a bit hard to believe.

“I ordered you a coffee,” Margaery continues, pushing it across the table. 

“Thank you.” When she reaches for it, their fingers brush. Margaery pulls back, and then laughs.

“God… you’re just so warm. I should’ve known, honestly.”

Her laugh makes Sansa smile. “You couldn’t have.”

“I suppose not. I’m not an expert or anything but… I don’t know, this just makes sense.” Her eyes flit over Sansa as they had when she’d walked in, but more carefully now. “Are you okay? That was mostly why I wanted to see you, I had to make sure. You look all right, but I brought along some potions…”

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Sansa swears. “The bane usually only gets really dangerous for us if we swallow it… though your grandmother’s version is definitely really potent.” Just thinking of the smell makes Sansa a little nauseous. 

“She always is anxious to prove she didn’t get the name ‘the Queen of Thorns’ by chance,” Margaery says wryly.

Sansa sips her coffee. It’s still warm, and she can taste hazelnut in the creamer.

“A druid and a werewolf. What are the odds?” she wonders. “That out of everyone else in this town, we would meet, become friends, and…” She trails off with a flush, waving a hand.

“Yeah, and.” Margaery grins. “The odds are better than you think. Strange things happen in this town.”

“Now that I can believe easily.”

Margaery gives her another piercing look.

“I didn’t want to like you, you know,” she confesses. Sansa can’t help but smile at that, and then smile harder at the way it makes Margaery redden.

“Oh?”

“Really. I don’t date much. Not seriously, I mean. You never know when you might have to drop everything to go welcome a delegation of elves, or help your grandmother care for an injured unicorn, or wrangle a thicket of sentient vines… Secrets are hard. But god…” She gives her the same look that she did in the empty classroom a few days ago, a look that makes Sansa feel all weak-kneed. “I liked you anyway. I like you a _lot_.”

“I like you a lot too,” Sansa says, and she can hear Margaery’s pulse thudding quickly as she stretches across the table, and gives her a very brief kiss on the mouth.

Sansa licks her lips as Margaery settles back, not caring that she can hear the owner’s grunt of disapproval all the way across the café. She can’t remember the last time she liked someone this much. And this someone already knows more about her than anyone outside her pack, has touched her in ways that her previous boyfriends and girlfriends never had.

She wants to try and keep this.

“So…” Sansa pushes her coffee aside. “My dad and your grandmother are apparently going to meet up when she gets back into town but… would you want to come say hi to the family now? My mother kind of wants to meet you.”

Margaery starts nodding even before she’s finished. 

“I’d love to. Let me call Loras and Sam. We can all sort of apologise together. And it’s long past time that the Starks got an official welcome into town.”

Standing, Sansa offers her a hand and grins. 

“I can’t think of anyone better to do it.”

~~~

A week or so later, Sansa and Margaery finally get to go out on their first date.

As they stroll along the boardwalk hand in hand, sipping their hot chocolates and listening to the fierce thundering of the waves, Margaery suddenly bursts into giggles.

“Nothing, nothing,” she says at Sansa’s raised brows. “It’s just... you know the story. That night on the full moon, I was a girl in the woods, going to her grandmother's house, and then I happened upon you, all big and bad...”

They laugh together, and Sansa squeezes her hand, feeling more cheerful than she has in a long while. Maybe she can end up living a fairy tale after all, one with a less gory ending than most. _And the werewolf and the druid finished their date, and found a cosy corner of the woods to settle down and snog a little..._

“Though you’re the one with the red hair,” Margaery continues, giving her a considering look. “Which is almost as good as a hood. Who would you be, the girl or the wolf?”

Sansa bares her teeth, snapping them gently.

“Both.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little coda. Many thanks to cleromancy for betaing and helping to get me unstuck! :*

A light autumn rain catches her on the last leg of the journey to the Tyrell cottage. Sansa’s been smelling it in the ozone for a while now, feeling the familiar prickle in her bones that tells of oncoming showers. She doesn’t try to outrun it. The water is pleasant, creating music on the leaves and the grass, and the rains never last very long this time of year anyway.

Still, she’s soaked by the time she makes it to the hut, nestled amidst a copse of trees in the south-eastern purlieus of the forest. It’s a humble little place, walls covered with creeping vines and wisteria, surrounded by half a dozen tiny gardens. A little brick red chimney pokes out of the roof. It’s the sort of place that looks like it should have a pie permanently cooling on the windowsill, or the smell of baking cookies wafting eternally from the oven. Instead, as Sansa approaches, she’s hit with the now familiar scents of various herbs: lemongrass, elfwater, and boiling mandrake root. Other scents, too; one in particular that makes her trot faster.

Margaery opens the front door just as Sansa pads up the few steps leading to the entrance, dripping water onto the stones.

“Oh my god, babe, you’re drenched!” Margaery exclaims. Her hair’s up in a high ponytail and she’s wearing her reading glasses and a much stained apron, which means that she’s working. “Wait here a minute, I’ll get you some towels.”

And she disappears back into the cottage.

Sansa steps back a few paces, rests her front paws on the top step and her back legs on the bottom one, and stretches out, arching her back. It makes her bones creak pleasantly, after that run. Then, she shakes herself roughly, getting most of the water out of her fur. She probably looks a sight, but it’s worth it to feel semi-dry again.

The sun is peeping out from behind a cloud, and Sansa can spy the beginning of a rainbow up over the trees to the north where the rain is still misting down. She turns back to the cottage, puts her nose to the air. She can smell the lingering scents of Olenna, Loras, Willas, Sam, and unsurprisingly, Jon. But Margaery is the only one at home at the moment.

Thus, she feels comfortable enough to change there on the doorstep. She rears up onto her hind legs and lets it take her over. The fur disappears like needles stabbing into her skin, her snout retracts, forming her nose and lips, all of her senses become dimmer and less acute, though still powerful. Her body stretches and sways with the familiar, age old pain.

When it is complete she opens her eyes, now a couple feet higher from the ground, to see Margaery standing in front of her with a robe in one hand and a towel in the other. Her cheeks are a dusty red, and she’s biting her bottom lip. She’s seen Sansa’s body before, but she always gets the look in her eyes when she does.

“Hi,” she says. She walks forward and drapes the robe around Sansa’s newly pink shoulders, covering her bare body from view. Sansa pinches the front of the robe closed with two fingers.

“Hello,” she replies, and leans down to kiss her girlfriend. Beneath the smells of the ingredients of whatever she’s brewing, there’s that familiar clean scent of earth and roses. Sansa drinks it in, curving an arm around Margaery’s waist as her girlfriend stands on her tiptoes, cupping her face and kissing her back thoroughly. The bridge of Marg’s glasses presses against her nose, but she hardly notices. Somehow, the hand holding Sansa’s robe closed finds its way into Margaery’s hair, and she inches closer, until her front is pressed against Margaery’s. They both shiver.

“Come on,” Margaery says, breaking away with an impish grin. She tugs on the robe’s lapels. “Let’s get inside before I maul you in front of the entire forest.”

Inside, the cottage is as warm and cosy as it looks on the outside, with flowers in vases on the mantle, comfortable furniture, and doilies everywhere. It might actually fit the mould of a homey grandmother’s cottage if not for the huge sinister pot bubbling in the fireplace, emitting the odours that Sansa had noticed outside.

“I just have to finish up this potion, and then I’m all yours,” Margaery promises, heading over to peer inside the pot. Sansa shrugs into the robe properly, ties it loosely and uses the towel to start drying off her hair. She knows better than to trek water into Olenna Tyrell’s house, so she stands firmly on the welcome mat as she does so.

“Take your time. We have all night, right?”

“Definitely,” Margaery vows. She sniffs the pot, throws a sprig of thyme into the mix, and mutters a few words. “Gran’s off to her bridge club, which I’m pretty sure is code for her and a bunch of other old birds summoning ghosts for laughs with an augmented Ouija board.”

Sansa giggles under the towel. The best thing about that sentence is that it is probably one hundred percent true.

“Loras has a date with a lesser storm god, so he’s cleared off. And Sam and your brother were here earlier doing homework, but I think they headed off to the cinema a little while ago.”

Sam, she knows, practically lives in the cottage with Olenna. Sansa still isn’t sure what happened with him and his father, but it’s nice to know that he’s found a little surrogate family, and that he and Jon are becoming fast friends. He’s the sweetest person in the world; he deserves some happiness.

“That’s nice,” she says, voice muffled by the sea of fluffy white. Judging herself dry enough, she moves across to the couch, where Margaery’s left a hairbrush and some clothes for her. “So we have the place to ourselves, then?”

“Mmhmm.” Margaery gets a long ladle from somewhere, and stirs the concoction with all her strength. “I’m going to make you a late lunch, then I can do your hair and your nails, then we’re going to eat cookies and watch every single movie that Zoe Saldana has ever appeared in, yes, even that one. And I _might_ put my hand down your shirt a few times. Prepare to be pampered, Sansa Stark.”

Sansa strokes the brush through her hair, juggling that task with watching her girlfriend fondly and trying not to blush.

“You don’t have to do all that, you know,” she says.

“I definitely do,” Margaery insists. She consults something in the tome next to her, and then cocks her hip, pouting. “How many dates have I missed in the past few weeks because of druid stuff? Too many. There was that business with the dragon egg, and then all the beeches got sick, then we had to deal with those gnomes…” She ticks off each incident on a teal-tipped finger. “Honestly, if dating were a job, someone would be docking my pay right now.”

Sansa smiles. They’ve been together for a few months now, and she’s quickly come to realise that this is one of those things for Margaery. She’ll only eat fries with mustard, no ketchup, she won’t ride bikes though she’s somehow a pro on horseback, she does all of her homework on the day she gets it, and she takes date nights _very_ seriously. It’s what makes evenings like these so special. Knowing how much Margaery – beautiful, talented, strong Margaery – likes her and wants to be with her in spite of all the reasons she has not to… it still makes Sansa’s head spin.

Stretching to her feet, she watches as Margaery tastes the potion, apparently judges it satisfactory, and takes the pot out of the fireplace. This done, Sansa knows that she’s out of work mode, and so she pads closer, and starts untying Margaery’s apron for her.

“None of that is your fault, though,” she says, kissing the side of Margaery’s neck, smack dab between her cluster of starry freckles. “This is part of your life; you can’t ignore it any more than I can ignore the moon.”

Margaery tosses her apron aside and leans back into Sansa’s arms. She slides her glasses off.

“Are all werewolves this wise about matters of the heart?”

“Only the ones with really lovely girlfriends, I think. In any case, I sort of like the idea of you running around being some kind of forest superhero.”

Margaery giggles and taps her chin, pretending to think. “Well, I _do_ look pretty good in spandex…”

Sansa kisses her neck again.

“You’d look good in anything.”

Margaery spins in her arms, looking mischievous.

“And right now, I think you’d look good in nothing.”

Redness leaps to her cheeks, and Sansa buries her face in Margaery’s neck with a pleased laugh. She hears as it begins raining lightly again, running across the rooftop like swift steps, but the sound of Margaery’s breathing is loudest in her ears.

“One track mind,” she accuses, kissing her way down Margaery’s throat. It’s warm and fragrant; Sansa could kiss her here for hours.

“Says the girl who’s currently chewing on my neck,” Margaery says slyly, leading them over to the couch while managing to keep her neck arched for Sansa. They fall back together, and the robe is already slipping off of Sansa’s shoulders when Margaery moves to straddle her.

“Well, you _did_ say something about giving me a late lunch,” Sansa murmurs, nipping at the tanned skin.

Margaery laughs again, and a sound like that could rule the world, Sansa thinks. It’s the prettiest thing she’s ever heard.

“Well in that case...” Margaery wriggles her way out of her top. “Tuck in.”

The little cottage seems to grow smaller and narrower, until the only thing in Sansa’s world, the only thing she can see, feel, touch and smell, is Margaery. Lemongrass, elfwater, the mandrake root cooling down in the centre of the room; they’re all fading away. Sansa breathes in deeply, cupping Margaery’s neck, pressing her fingers into the softness there and sharing her warmth. Their kiss is unhurried and careful; they have time enough for everything else to follow. Sansa locks her arms around her girlfriend, and outside, the autumn rain continues to come down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully you’ll soon be seeing more in this series. Yes, series! I am... notoriously bad at those, but I’ll believe in me if you believe in me. There should be Sansa&Cat, Robb/Theon, Sam/Jon, and of course, more of these ladies. :)
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
